Ryan's Daughter

Publicity posters liken her to Shirley Temple. Her perky performance in Paper Moon is being compared with the classic childhood performances of Jackie Coogan and Jackie Cooper. Still, such megapraise does not entirely please nine-year-old Tatum O'Neal. "It's not the funnest thing in the world being called a boy," she laments in her husky voice. It was not all that much fun making a movie either. "I thought you could make a movie in one day with maybe four hours of work, because you can see it in two hours," she reasoned. Instead, it took 60 days. But in the resulting 102 minutes, Tatum O'Neal emerges as the most exciting child star in decades.

With a cunning apple pie face, Tatum seems typecast as Addie Pray, a preternaturally shrewd waif who hooks up with a conartist, played by her father, Ryan O'Neal. Soon she proves a defter swindler than O'Neal. She also seems more worldly, smoking, cussing and plotting dirty tricks. A pair of rag tag charmers, they sometimes earn their keep hawking Bibles to new widows.

Off-screen Tatum is a pixie. Her moods flicker from gleeful to sassy, and she dreams of growing up to "wear big elevator shoes and great clothes." She confided to TIME'S Mary Cronin that "what was good about the film was that I got to know my father better." Then, green eyes sparking, she adds: "You have got to admit he did very well." Actually, Tatum stole scene after scene.

Tatum's childhood has been more gothic than glamorous. Her mother, Actress Joanna Moore, and O'Neal are divorced, and waged bitter custody fights over Tatum and her brother Griffin, 8. For several years the children lived a hippie existence with their mother on a California ranch. O'Neal charged that his former wife was using drugs and not properly supervising the children. The parents came to an agreement in 1971, and Ryan took Tatum while the mother kept Griffin. When Director Peter Bogdanovich suggested that O'Neal and Tatum costar, O'Neal leaped at the chance. "I felt if we did this movie together," he says, "my God, we'd be connected for life. It would undo the years we were not together."

Not being together seemed like a good idea during the tensions of filming. When Tatum would blow a scene, she was quick to pass the buck. "It wasn't my fault," she would cry. "Ryan did it." Says Bogdanovich: "She was a handful."

Tatum learned to smoke for the role, but vows "I'm not going to smoke in real life--Humphrey Bogart died from it." Harder than smoking was a scene where she had to go up to a candy counter and say, "Can I have some Juicy Fruit gum, please?" She had flu, was "full of penicillin, and my mind was spinning." Bogdanovich decided he wanted her to ask for Dentyne. "I told him, 'You can't do that. I'm sick. I've learned my lines and I can't do it over.' " But she did 43 takes--and in the end she asked for Juicy Fruit.

With Paper Moon behind her, Tatum thinks that the fun thing about being an actress "is getting presents --like the gold hand that Cicely Tyson gave me when I finished Paper Moon." She flashes the charm and says: "I'm spoiled. I wasn't spoiled when I was younger. But I think that the present for me is to be a little spoiled."

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